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Walking the Line Between Past and Present: ‘doing’phenomenology on historic battlefieldsCarman, John ; Carman, Patricia

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Citation for published version (Harvard):Carman, J & Carman, P 2012, Walking the Line Between Past and Present: ‘doing’ phenomenology on historicbattlefields. in H Cobb, OJT Harris, C Jones & P Richardson (eds), Reconsidering Archaeological Fieldwork:exploring onsite relationships between theory and practice. Springer, New York, pp. 97-112.

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Series Title

Chapter Title Walking the Line Between Past and Present: ‘Doing’ Phenomenology on Historic Battlefields

Chapter SubTitle

Copyright Year 2012

Copyright Holder Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Family Name CarmanParticleGiven Name John

Corresponding Author

SuffixDivision Bloody Meadows Project, Institute of Archaeology & AntiquityOrganization University of BirminghamAddress B15 2TT, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UKEmail j.carman@bham.ac.uk

Family Name CarmanParticleGiven Name Patricia

Author

SuffixDivision Bloody Meadows Project, Institute of Archaeology & AntiquityOrganization University of BirminghamAddress B15 2TT, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UKEmail

Abstract The purpose of the Bloody Meadows Project1 (Carman and Carman 2006a, b, 2007, 2009) is to investigatehistoric battlefields of all periods, and we choose to do so from a broadly ‘phenomenological’ perspective.Our aim is specifically not to recreate what the battlefield was like on the day of battle or the events of thatday, but rather to explore the historicity of particular kinds of places through the experience of being there.

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H. Cobb et al. (eds.), Reconsidering Archaeological Fieldwork: Exploring On-Site Relationships Between Theory and Practice, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-2338-6_7, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Introduction

The purpose of the Bloody Meadows Project1 (Carman and Carman 2006a, b, 2007, 2009) is to investigate historic battlefields of all periods, and we choose to do so from a broadly ‘phenomenological’ perspective. Our aim is specifically not to recre-ate what the battlefield was like on the day of battle or the events of that day, but rather to explore the historicity of particular kinds of places through the experience of being there.

Following Tilley (1994) and others, a phenomenological approach to the study of landscapes as taken by archaeologists has generally been limited to the monumental ‘ritual’ landscapes of European prehistory. The approach is, however, also of more general relevance to any encultured space, especially any marked as a particular kind of space. Tilley justifies taking a phenomenological approach to landscapes as follows:

[What] is clear [from the ethnographic record] is the symbolic, ancestral, and temporal significance of landscape [to peoples]. The landscape is continually being encultured, bringing things into meaning as part of a symbolic process by which human consciousness makes the physical reality of the natural environment into an intelligible and socialised form.

(Tilley 1994:67)

As he emphasises, the enculturation of landscape turns it from mere topography to a ‘place’: “Cultural markers [such as monuments or the memory of large-scale violence are used] to create a new sense of place.... An already encultured landscape becomes refashioned, its meanings now controlled by the imposition of [a new] cultural form” (Tilley 1994:208).

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J. Carman (*) • P. CarmanBloody Meadows Project, Institute of Archaeology & Antiquity, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UKe-mail: j.carman@bham.ac.uk

Chapter 7Walking the Line Between Past and Present: ‘Doing’ Phenomenology on Historic Battlefields

John Carman and Patricia Carman

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The typical interpretive device in battlefield research is the battlefield plan (see e.g. English Heritage 1995), which is presented as an objective view from above, divorced from the action. But as Tilley also emphasises, place is not some-thing that can be understood ‘objectively’:

Looking at the two-dimensional plane of the modern topographic map with sites [or artefact scatters] plotted on it, it is quite impossible to envisage the landscape in which these places are embedded. The representation fails, and cannot substitute for being there, being in place. [The] process of observation requires time and a feeling for the place.

(Tilley 1994:75)

The same is true of the traditional battlefield plan: it cannot substitute for direct experience nor for movement through the space. We therefore draw upon the ideas of prehistoric archaeologists who are developing ways of utilising the idea that the way of moving through particular kinds of spaces can be considered a form of ritual or performance (Carman 1999:242; Pearson 1998). For example, Barrett writes of prehistoric monuments in Wiltshire, England, that

for the distinctions [between people] to have operated… it was necessary for people to move between these [architectural] regions; to enter and leave each other’s presence, to observe passively or to act, to lead processions or to follow. The practice of social life is thus… performed.

(Barrett 1994:29)

Here, ritual activity is considered as a form of ‘acted out’ discourse (Barrett 1991:5; Thomas 1991 34), focusing on the physicality and (apparent) ‘objectivity’ of actions (Barrett 1991:4–6). Participants in rituals are guided through a series of specific meaningful actions, leading them to make the approved connections between them (Thomas 1991:34). Taking such ideas further, Thomas (1991) and Pearson (1998) argue that the focus of early Bronze Age ‘beaker’ burial ritual in Britain was on the body of the deceased. Objects which were put into the ground “constituted material signifiers whose role was to ensure that the intended reading of the dead person was made by the audience [at] the funeral” (Thomas 1991:34). Here, the space of the grave itself acted as the ‘stage’ of a theatrical performance (Pearson 1998:36–37). Mourners thus became active participants in the funerary ritual (Thomas 1991:39), players in the drama as well as spectators (Pearson 1998). The often slow and deliberate movements of bodies of troops across the space of a battlefield, frequently in defiance of common-sense, have obvious ritual conno-tations. The same is true of aspects such as drill, the proper use of equipment, standardised formations, and the focus on the capture of enemy standards and correctly worn regalia (Keeley 1996:62–63).

Putting these two styles of approach together, gaining a feeling for the place as a place and a focus on how one moves through it in performance, one can perhaps gain a specific sense of what a particular historic battlefield represents in terms of experience and meaning. The purpose of the Bloody Meadows project is thus not so much an attempt to recreate what an individual battlefield was like on the day of battle (or indeed the events of the battle). It is rather to establish a meaning for the

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historicity of the place in the present: hence our simultaneous concern both for an understanding of the nature of war in the past and preservation and public inter-pretation in the present.

It is for these reasons that the Bloody Meadows Project looks very specifically at the kind of place where the battle was fought. The majority of archaeologists working on battlefields spend their time looking at the ground, trying to find the material left behind by the action. We instead spend time looking up and around us, at the shape of the space itself. A close focus on the shape of the space allows differences of choice across space and through time to become evident. In taking such an approach, and in being deliberately aware of both past and present in a particular place, we walk the line that lies between the past and the present, where neither dominates the other. Instead, they interact in interesting and challenging ways. It is not a search for an experience of being in the past, but rather an experi-ence in the present which reflects and derives from the contribution of history to that place. In the case of a historic battlefield, it is not an experience of ancient slaughter, but an experience of a place in the present as read through its history as manifested in material form. This history inevitably includes the event of the battle that was fought there, but not exclusively.

Investigating Battlefields as Historic Places

The primary data source used in the Bloody Meadows Project is the physical landscape of the place where warfare was practised. Drawing upon the work of previous scholars – who have identified the locations of many battlefields from the past – we focus upon the landscape itself to ask specific questions (Table 7.1). The answers can be ordered as set out in Table 7.2.

In Table 7.2, the rules of war cover such things as the degree of mutual agree-ment needed before fighting could commence, whether the two sides were required to see each other as ‘legitimate’ enemies or whether anyone could participate in a battle, some assessment of the level of violence employed, and how (if at all) the battlesite was remembered afterwards. They are a measure of how ‘formal’ battle was regarded and how distinctive from other forms of conflict at that time.

The characteristics of the battlefield landscape are addressed in order to identify features present in the battlespace and how they were used by combatants. This gives some insight into attitudes to the battlefield as a place. The query as to whether structured formations were present (such as ordered columns or lines of troops) gives a clue to how participants moved through the battlefield space: if the landscape is seen as architecture, so too can the forces engaged be seen as a kind of ‘mobile architecture’. The point is not merely to note those features present and used by combatants, as military historians might, but also and especially those features present but not used, and those present today but not on the day.

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The two final sections attempt to summarise our expectations as filtered through an understanding of ‘good military practice’ derived from military writings (as in the concept of “inherent military probability” discussed by Keegan (1976:33–34)). It is, we believe, the dysfunctional behaviour (that is, the apparent mistakes or omis-sions) which can give a clue to cultural attitudes and expectations of the battlefield space which differ from our own. In applying this analysis to distinctive examples of warfare from various periods, the differences between periods become evident.

In approaching the landscapes that are our object, we use what we have called ‘the archaeologist’s eye’ – that is, the capacity of a trained landscape archaeologist

Table 7.2 Parameters for studying battlefieldsRules of war Battlefield architecture

Agreement to fight: Y/N Features presentMutual recognition as “legitimate” enemies: Y/N Type of feature usedLevel of violence: High, medium, low Type of feature not usedMarking of battle-site Use of terrain

As coverTo impede visibilityTo impede movement

Participants Structured formations: Y/NFunctional aspectsDysfunctional aspects

Table 7.1 Bloody Meadows Project: research questionsOf battlesites as historic places Of battlesites as heritage

How clearly bounded is the battlefield space (does it have clear boundaries, such as impassable ground or a water obstacle)?

Was the battlefield subsequently marked by a monument or memorial in any way?

If ‘yes’Where is it in relation to the battlesite?What form does it take?Who or what does it commemorate?Who raised it?When was it raised?Is there any indication of the specific audience

it is intended to address?What does it say about the relations of

commemorator or commemoratee to the battlesite?

Are links made with other sites or to other events?

To what use(s) has the battlefield been put, and what is it used for today?

Is it located on high or low ground relative to the surrounding space?

What kind of use (other than for war) was the site put to, if any?

Is it near or distant from settlement?Is it visible from settlement?Does the ground contain particular types of

landscape features – natural or built – which play a part in the battlefield action?

What features present in the landscape (if any) played no part in the battlefield action?

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to interpret space and to identify (especially manufactured) features in landscapes otherwise unfamiliar to them – to reach an understanding of the spaces of battle. By approaching such sites with a structured set of questions and by recording data in a standard format (Table 7.2) it becomes possible to recognise what such sites have in common and how they differ from one another. This in turn allows the identification of the types of location favoured as battlesites in particular periods of history, and these can be related to other aspects of the battle as recorded by historians – including the type of participants, the nature of the conflict of which the battle is a part, and the flow of the action. Overall, it presents an opportunity to gain a direct insight into the ideological factors guiding warfare practice in that period and to compare them with those guiding warfare practice in a different period.

The Marking of Battlefields

Many battlefields are marked by the erection of monuments of stone or concrete which are solid and enduring. Others are marked in other ways: by more ephemeral signs of memory, such as the names given to places and features, or local traditions which ascribe particular events to particular points in the landscape. Others again are marked by the actions of officialdom in recognising the site as of particular historical interest and importance: the traditional manner is to place an interpretive sign at a prominent viewspot and perhaps to construct a circular walk or drive to visit the locations deemed important to an understanding of the events of the battle and its landscape context. Officialdom may also – as in the case of the English Heritage Register – mark the site out on a map, providing it with a convenient border and edge, allowing preservation and management within and less control without.

All such ways of marking battlesites – and others – indicate the way in which the site is perceived in the present; and to whom, and in what way, it is conceived to be important. The purpose of investigating these aspects of battlefields is to gain an insight into the contemporary meanings ascribed to such places. The purpose of combining such interests with research into the battlesite as a historic landscape in its own right is to relate the two: to find out if particular kinds of historic places are treated in one set of ways, while others are treated the same or differently, and to what extent, by whom and for what purpose.

Battlefields as Cemeteries and Memorials

The archaeological study of monuments to the dead and how war is commemorated is an area that has come to the fore in recent years (e.g. Borg 1991). Much of this has focussed on monuments to the wars of the last century – especially the First and Second World Wars (Winter 1995) and as part of the developing academic interest in collective social memory (e.g. Connerton 1989). According to some, the memorialisation

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of the dead of World War One was a process of de-personalisation at the service of a sense of national unity (Parker Pearson 1982): lists of named casualties gave way to monuments commemorating an anonymous ‘The Glorious Dead’ or simply ‘The Fallen’; and annual acts of remembrance denied the opportunity for a consideration of the experience or purpose of war (Bushaway 1992). On the other hand, it has been pointed out that the majority of war memorials constructed after World War One “were initiatives which came from the people rather than the politi-cians…. [Their] erection was instigated by the bereaved public” (Tarlow 1999:162–163). They represented a response to the loss that had been suffered by large numbers of the population and who wished to find some way of marking and coming to terms with that loss. This emphasis on bereavement represents another strand to some recent archaeological work: a focus not only on the physical aspects of remains, but also on the emotional content of particular kinds of object (see also Tarlow 1999). In looking at monuments to the dead from this point of view, the question of who they were for comes particularly to the forefront and opens up a sensitivity to the meanings they carry.

Battlefield Preservation

The idea of preserving battlefields as important historic places is a relatively new one in Europe. The first Register of Historic Battlefields in Europe was produced in England, and has been subject to criticism for treating such places purely as histori-cal phenomena, where the primary sources are written and where the location, its extent, and any physical evidence of conflict it may contain is of secondary concern (Foard 2001). These concerns have been partly addressed in recent Scottish historic environment policy (Historic Scotland 2009) where the archaeological potential of such sites is specifically addressed, and similar initiatives in Wales and Ireland are likely to follow suit. Nevertheless, in both the Scottish and English cases, the fact that a battlefield is included in the Register should be taken into account for devel-opment control purposes under relevant official guidance does not equate with full legal protection in the same manner as scheduled monuments and sites. In other parts of Europe, however, gaining official recognition for historic battlefields is a process barely begun.

This situation contrasts with the position in, for example, the USA, where bat-tlefields considered worthy of note are taken into full legal protection and stewardship by responsible agencies under the aegis of the American Battlefield Protection Program of the Federal National Park Service (American Battlefield Protection Program 2009). A series of Federal laws relating to the preservation and protection of historic battlefields have been passed, primarily to provide funding programmes for suitable initiatives, and the most important battlesites of American history – especially those from the Revolutionary and Civil wars – have been taken into State care by the National Park Service under various designations.

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Investigating Battlefields as Places in the Present

The interest of the Bloody Meadows Project in the way battlefields are subsequently marked (whether soon after the battle or a considerable time later) is reflected particularly in the research questions (Table 7.1).

We are always fully conscious that marking a site is not the only measure of its importance or interest. Failure to mark a site can itself constitute a statement: sometimes this will be a representation of a lack of recognition of any importance or significance the site may carry for certain people, but other times a more positive omission with a purpose to it. By looking closely at such sites and the monuments and other marks they bear it is possible to come to an understanding of the meanings they carry in our own time, which can make a contribution to the study of collective memory (Connerton 1989; Foote 1997; Jones 2007).

These are also reflected in the purposes for which such sites are used. Battlefields from the past rarely offer much in the way of an obvious physical legacy. Where earthwork defences were constructed, or the fighting resulted in significant changes to the shape of the land, these traces may persist to become part of later uses. In those cases where archaeological investigation has been carried out, the archaeology has most often consisted of human remains buried at the site. More recent research has revealed the presence of scatters of material across the battlespace – most typically for battles of the firearms era, bullets and bullet casings (Haecker and Mauck 1997; Scott et al. 1989); for earlier periods, attachments to clothing which may have been torn off in the struggle (Sutherland 2001). Since such remains are generally invisible to the naked human eye, however, the landscape of such places has been seen as ‘empty’ of archaeology and therefore available for other uses. These uses may extend to the provision of park and amenity spaces, the historical significance of the location giving it an extra attractiveness to visitors. At Northampton, for instance, the space of the battlefield has been converted into the municipal golf course; at Quebec in Canada the site of the conflict of 1759 has been used as a site of recreation since the beginning of the twentieth century. Hence our reason for asking about the subsequent uses of the site up to the present. From this we can ascertain the various uses over time to which the space has been put – other than, or at least as well as, for war making – and from this gain some insight into the meanings the level of significance the place has acquired over time.

Choosing Sites for Research

The focus of the Bloody Meadows Project is upon the older and perhaps less well known sites of violence in the past. We deliberately stop short of the twentieth century since a wide variety of research is already being conducted into the warfare of our own age (Saunders 2001; Schofield et al. 2002; Schofield 2005) and modern battlefields tend to be both very large and very well promoted. In addition, twentieth

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century warfare has disconcertingly extended from the surface of our globe into other realms: into the air; under the sea; into the most inhospitable regions of the world, such as mountain ranges, jungles, deserts, the arctic and antarctic; and even into outer space. It has also gone beyond the physical into more conceptual regions: into the relations of government to people (as opposed to being limited to the concerns of a specific ‘warrior’ caste); into the realm of science and technology; and, with the rise of the computer, into the so-called ‘infosphere’ and electronically-generated cyberspace (Carman 2002). The battles of our age can be said to have no limits or boundaries: they frequently cannot be seen or measured, nor physically controlled. Unlike the warfare of previous ages, they do not occupy a particular location but are at once nowhere and everywhere. Their understanding thus lies beyond the methodology of this particular project, and we leave them to others with more appropriate styles of approach.

In general, the purpose of battle has been held to be the achievement of some kind of decision. However, as Wiegley (1991) has pointed out, the battles of the era from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were for the most part indecisive. What we tend to remember are those battles that can be held to be in some sense to have resulted in a clear decision: for instance, by forcing a change of strategy upon one side in a conflict; by closing off a military or political option during the course of a conflict; or by bringing about the final defeat of one nation by another and thus an end – however temporarily sometimes – to a conflict. But the majority of battles do not achieve such decisiveness: instead they lead to more violence elsewhere at a later time. These battles, which are more readily and more easily forgotten, represent the majority of battles fought and the more typical form of battle in any period of history. What their study has to tell us is less about the outcome of wars and the political and social changes they engender than what war was generally like in that period and how the people involved perceived and understood the role of war in their lives. By focussing on such less spectacular and less historically significant events we gain a different kind of insight into war in the past than from much military history.

Standing in Empty Spaces

Historic battlefields are locations where events once took place. They are now places marked by those events and accordingly of interest to students of those events. To study them is to stand in a place today, dreaming of an event of yesterday, an event that has passed and is gone. All one can do is stand and look, and that – put simply and bluntly – is the methodology of the Bloody Meadows Project. But there is more to looking than inactivity, and to look effectively one must also take note and respond to the images that present themselves. That too is part of the methodology of the Bloody Meadows Project.

For us, taking this approach means walking through the space with a keen eye to the different periods of history – and different human uses of the space – represented

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by buildings, monuments, street plans, different kinds of land-use, and different shapes of ground. The result is a kind of ‘time travel’ – not a one-way trip into a singular and particular past and back, but a real journey through various times, where different pasts and an immediate present are met in juxtaposition. Places have histories that are evident in the experiences of them, and it is in experiencing them as places that the histories become evident. The place has meaning because it has a history and that history is manifested in the material evidences of its past which testify to interesting and different pasts. These material things create the drama of the place which is the experience of its history in the present.

It is this historicity that such a ‘phenomenological’ approach to historic battlefields can produce. In taking such an approach, and in being deliberately aware of both past and present in a particular place, the line that lies between the past and the present is walked, where neither dominates the other. Instead, they interact in interesting and challenging ways, as illustrated in the following three examples (Fig. 7.1).

St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK, 1455

For the first battle at St Albans in 1455 King Henry VI gathered his forces in the centre of the town, where the wide main market street, as today, was suitable for the mustering of an army. The opposing army launched an attack that travelled up the narrow streets towards the centre of the town. Barricades were thrown down and the defenders retreated towards the town centre (Carman and Carman

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Fig. 7.1 Northampton Street, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England. Site of a battle in 1455

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2006:97–100. Some of the buildings present today were those standing on the day of battle, and passing up these streets today, you still enter the town centre quite suddenly, going from quiet residential side-streets into the bustling market area. Nearby, a new shopping precinct overlies what were household garden plots on the day of the battle. Its internal arrangement reflects the narrow alleys that criss-crossed the area in the fifteenth century: efforts to negotiate one’s way around and out of this confusing space perhaps reflects the soldiers’ efforts to climb over fences and through hedges. In both streets and shopping precinct, the effect is somewhat similar to that likely to have been experienced on the day of battle (Fig. 7.2).

Roundway Down, Wiltshire, UK, 1643

The landscape of Roundway Down is typical of its region in the southern part of Britain: rolling chalk downland with mostly gentle slopes although cut by steeper scarps. Roundway Hill itself is a rough isosceles triangle in shape with two long sides to north and south and the higher and broader eastern end immediately above the battlefield. To the south lies the town of Devizes, masked by a lower rise of ground, and linked by a route that climbs the steep southern slope of Roundway Hill. The land was mostly open grazing in the seventeenth century: the ploughed ground that makes up the rest of today’s landscape is much more recent in origin. Roundway Down is today peaceful countryside: agricultural, tamed, gentle and empty. To see the battlefield you must walk around it and gaze at it from some distance away, for there is no right of way through it.

Fig. 7.2 ‘Bloody Ditch’, Roundway Down, Wiltshire, England. Site of a battle in 1643

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For 2 km above the eastern end of Roundway Hill the ground rises gently, but suddenly it falls almost sheer for 100 m: down this near vertical slope fleeing cavalry tumbled and fell, horse and rider, unable to stop or rein in. Walkers today going slowly on foot also come across it with frightening suddenness: one moment the ground is flat, the next it falls away into bottomlessness, hidden by trees. What it was like for fast-moving riders – the panicked screaming of horses and riders; the attempt to pull up only to be pushed on by those coming from behind; the fear, confusion and noise – can at least be guessed at when you are there. The bottom of the slope still bears the memory of the event: it is today called the Bloody Ditch (Fig. 7.3).

Corunna/Elviña, Galicia, Spain 1809

The battle of Corunna – or as it is known locally, Elviña – was fought by a retreating British army before taking ship from Spain in 1809. The contending armies were formed on two parallel ridges about six kilometres south of the city, and most of the fighting took place on the slopes of the higher and steeper southern ridge on which the French army stood. The most fierce fighting took place in and around the village of Elviña, which changed hands several times. The vernacular stone buildings of the village still hug the steep slopes of the hill and the original core of the settlement remains much as it must have been on the day. From within the settlement, due to foreshortened lines of sight and impeding buildings, a sense of the surrounding

Fig. 7.3 The modern University at Elviña, Galicia, Spain. Site of the battle of Corunna 1809

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landscape is difficult to grasp: little can be seen except the village itself. The modern Elviña church lies across the valley, providing a view of the main area where fighting took place. From here it is possible to gain a good view across the flat ground of the valley between the two main ridges and the arable fields occupying it. The small size of the fields and the vernacular buildings set amongst them indicate little change in this landscape since 1809; although on the hills above the encroachments are very clear of the expanding city and especially the new University which has been built specifically here because of the significance of the site in local historical memory.

Answering Some Criticisms of Phenomenology

The three preceding examples are intended to emphasise that ours is not a search for an experience of being in the past, but rather an experience in the present which simultaneously reflects and derives from the contribution of history to a particular place. In the case of a historic battlefield, it is not an experience of ancient slaughter, but an experience of a particular place in the present as read through its history as manifested in material form. This history inevitably includes the event of the battle that was fought there – and indeed is what attracts us to explore that place – but not exclusively. It is that experience of being in the place that is captured.

We have been accused in one review of our work of going to places so we can ‘dream’ the past (Foard 2006). This is a common charge against phenomenologi-cally-derived studies in archaeology. Trigger (2006:474–475) has referred to it as a ‘contemplative’ or ‘intuitive’ style of archaeology reliant on assumptions about a common ‘human nature’ and a shared bodily experience that crosses cultural bound-aries. He points out that anthropology has “empirically demonstrated that cultural differences are sufficiently great as to make it unlikely that [phenomenological approaches] could control for ethnocentrism and produce reliable results” (Trigger 2006:474): he also accuses phenomenological approaches of relying upon subjec-tive feeling (Trigger 2006:477).

By contrast, we believe that our work demonstrates the utility of an approach to landscapes based upon phenomenology: moreover, by applying this approach to historic landscapes we show the usefulness of the approach beyond the study of prehistory. Our approach is based entirely upon the notion that those attitudes towards and the expectations of landscape in the past were different from those held by people in the twenty-first century: if they were not different we would have nothing to say. We believe our approach seeks out and identifies those differences by using an explicitly modern Western mode of investigation of space and comparing it with the use of that space made by people in the past. It is from noting the manner in which space, objects and landscape features are used or any failure to use them as we would today that these differences emerge.

Where objects that were present in the past and would be available for use in the present – especially for military purposes, such as facilitating or impeding movement,

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for concealment or for protection – but were not used for these purposes, it can be inferred that the objects were not seen as useful. This in turn indicates a measure of difference between the past and the present. We also compare the uses of space in one historical period from those of another, revealing other differences in attitude and expectation.

Trees and Buildings

Woodland can offer a place to hide troops, may be an area to avoid or simply provide a source of raw material. In the medieval battlefields we have studied, the wood-land areas were avoided by troops and if present at all provided a boundary to the battlefield space. The trees themselves were sometimes a source for the material used to construct barricades protecting the defenders’ position. The specifics of particular circumstances seem to determine the role of woodland in battle: as an incon-venience or an asset, as a landscape feature or as merely a number of individual trees. The manner in which woodland is treated by soldiers in different periods may indicate how such features are perceived more generally in that period: our work suggests that trees are more likely to be seen as woodland landscape features (that is, as woods or forests) in more recent periods, and more as sources of material (that is, merely a collection of individual trees) in earlier times. Either: but not both at the same time. There is scope for more research here.

Churches and chapels are a significant and common feature in any European landscape; accordingly their presence in the battlefield space may not be remark-able, and also as what is very often the largest stone structure in their area they may inevitably attract attention. Frequently, however, they were ancillary to the battlefield action, and specifically avoided by combatants during the fighting. Monasteries too frequently stand just off the space of medieval battles. The fighting avoided these places, but they provided rescue for the wounded and medical aid once the fighting was over. We think it significant that of our sample of medieval battlefields, almost all are known to be close to or involve churches and monasteries while less than half more modern sites do. Fighting penetrates only one such structure in the medieval period while a majority in the modern period are in the centre of the fighting. This suggests a change of attitude towards such places over time: that while churches and church foundations are not to be fought in or over in the medieval period, their presence nearby is desired or expected; while in later times they form merely another part of the battlefield space and no longer command special respect. Non-church buildings are relatively rare in the medieval battlefield landscape unless the battle takes place through urban space. The incorporation of settlements into battlefields in later periods increases the number of buildings present and such buildings are more likely to be used as part of the fighting, indicating another change of attitude to landscape features.

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Conclusion

We believe that by choosing to examine landscapes that were used for a very particular kind of purpose in the past makes the identification and examination of differences in attitude and expectation as revealed by differences in use more reliable, and that they therefore reveal real differences between various periods of history and those periods and our own. The differences in expectation and understanding of landscapes thus derived can then be taken up by others who are interested in understanding the use and attitudes towards space of people in the past. Elsewhere (Carman and Carman 2006a, b, 2007, 2009) we have given details of our results and more detailed consideration of what we think we have and have not achieved. Here we wish to emphasise that we believe those results to be meaningful, and that taking our phenomenologically-derived approach to particular places of experience in the past demonstrates the value of such approaches. However, to do so is neither simple nor straightforward: it is a case of constant awareness of one’s situatedness in the present while attempting to compare that with a known past.

Ours is not an effort to ‘dream’ a past, but to compare the past and the present – and different pasts with each other and with the present – in a meaningful way that opens up possibilities for understanding the difference of the past from the present. As Tilley puts it, it is about “being there, being in place” (Tilley 1994:75) in the present but being simultaneously aware of that place’s past. Accordingly, our research is very largely not about the past at all, but about studying the past as a set of contemporary practices (Shanks and Tilley 1987a, b; Edgeworth 2006). We firmly locate ourselves in the present – and use knowledge of the past as a counterpoint to expose the peculiarities of the modern experience of space and place.

Notes

1. The Bloody Meadows Project is co-directed by the authors and was instigated in 1998. It derives from their joint interests in landscapes as particular kinds of entity, in war as a subject of archaeological enquiry, and as an opportunity to use archaeology to contribute to significant debates of our time. The project studies battlefields from all historic periods and is not limited by geographical region.

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Author QueriesChapter No.: 7 0001486240

Queries Details Required Author’s Response

AU1 Kindly include the references “Tilley (1994), Keegan (1976) and Carman and Carman (2006)” in the reference list.

AU2 Please confirm if the citations inserted for Figs. 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 is okay.